Smart, witty "thoughts for the day"?

December 23, 2015 12:13 PM

I am thinking about starting my morning radio show with a very brief "thought for the day," as I have about 20 seconds to fill each morning. Looking for both individual ideas, and sites. More details inside.

I'm not looking for anything maudlin or greeting-card-ish, but rather smart, inspirational thoughts that might actually help set someone's day on the right tone. For instance, what I used this morning was: "No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire," by L. Frank Baum. Smart, sweet, to-the-point and somewhat literary.

I'm working on building a stockpile of these, so I'm looking for both individual examples, as well as websites that are good about collecting things like this. Thanks!

posted by jbickers to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

I think it a great idea. I am not sure where on the internet to find these, but I would suggest that after you have at least a month or two's worth that you ask your listeners to send them in. You could acknowledge on air who sent it in (or not at the sender's request).

I don't know if this fits the bill, but my mother used to say to me, "You know little Augie, it doesn't cost anything to smile and it is invaluable."
posted by AugustWest at 1:29 PM on December 23, 2015

They're very specifically oriented towards art projects, so may or may not be relevant to your interests, but Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies are some of the best inspirational tidbits I've ever come across. The full list is here. I set up my .bashrc to print one out every time I open a shell.
posted by invitapriore at 1:49 PM on December 23, 2015

I think you might like Zig Ziglar quotes (not necessarily the business/sales ones, but there are many others here). For instance, I loved this quote when I first saw it: "Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well."

I also saved this link to an article on Warren Buffet which has a number of quotable thoughts IMO.

Randy Pausch is fantastic for this, again IMO. For instance, "The brick walls are not there to keep us out; the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

I like this quote from Theodore Roosevelt: "I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being."

You might also want to investigate Thomas Merton. One example: “The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers most.”
posted by forthright at 4:34 PM on December 23, 2015

While I don't have any specific quotes to point you towards, I'd urge you to be conscious of collecting bon mots from women and/or people of color. It's too easy to inadvertently end up with material from white men, especailly if you're mining from the white men who have been canonized as literary greats. I second collecting quotes from your listeners, too!
posted by missmary6 at 5:39 PM on December 23, 2015

Agree on missmary6's comment: I love a good inspirational quote, but when it tends to skew the same 20-30 white cis guys from 19th and 20th century literature that I'm already overly familiar with due to studying the literary canon, it's stale and very boring. Nothing perks me up like a good quote from someone that I am unfamiliar with! (Thoreau, you're kinda cool, but you're not the only one...). I also find that most curation blogs tend to repeat that same hegemony, so I am gonna make my suggestions lean away from that.

I would recommend doing searches like "African authors" or "Asian american authors" or "lgbtq women authors" or "authors of the diaspora" that would be adventurous. Often times, there are some great blog posts that show up, and I'll provide two examples below:

http://ourlegaci.com/2014/09/16/33-brilliant-quotes-from-legendary-black-women-writers/
http://hellogiggles.com/funny-feminist-quotes/
posted by yueliang at 6:39 PM on December 23, 2015

A similar spin would be that you could do a "word of the day" and use that to comment on something with that as a frame. That way, you could choose to either do a word that relates to a quote, or simply give your own thoughts on a word that is inspirational or thought-provoking. Could allow for more flexibility. To use your example from above - the word could be "knowledge" and then you could read the L. Frank Baum quote.
posted by belau at 4:35 AM on December 24, 2015

Search on authors' names on Brainy Quotes (and don't forget poets). Here's Emily Dickinson's page.
posted by Short Attention Sp at 5:02 AM on December 24, 2015

Brain Pickings

I have issues with some of her choice of content and curation, but plenty of good quotes here.
posted by yueliang at 7:49 PM on December 25, 2015